Transformative Kiwi Justice and the Christchurch Massacre

With 50 murder charges and
numerous lower charges, as well as the public nature and
social media "performance" of the crime, there is little
doubt that Brenton Tarrant will be found guilty of murder in
the Christchurch massacre. Yet the scale and global
magnification of the crime insinuate that the massacre was
no ordinary crime scene. Thus, ordinary legal justice
confined to the immediate jurisdiction will not do.

Beyond Legal Justice

I am not
suggesting that some sort of quasi-legal or extra-judicial
intervention be done instead. New Zealand's courts are
primary caretakers of orderly due process, so effectively
and judiciously pursuing and concluding the legal case will
provide a counterweight to the desire by white supremacists
to hijack the event for further anti-Muslim propaganda, and
on the other side, reduce the potential for this to stoke
anti-Christian violence.

However, precisely because of
the collective impact and global kinetic repercussions
spread via social media, and the limitations of the courts
to address these wider issues, it is important that justice
not only be left in the hands of legal professionals. This
requires wider efforts to prevent further copy-cat attacks
and retaliatory strikes by those seeking revenge. These
efforts must be collective, varied, electronic, and
multi-layered, some immediate and others sustained, as
manifestations of what I call Transformative Justice. While
I am not the first to use the term, what I mean by
Transformative Justice includes not only policing and legal
forms of justice, but restorative justice and transitional
justice initiatives as well - all woven together in an
integrated tapestry that promotes immediate accountability,
social healing, and violence prevention.

Legal and
legislative efforts to tighten New Zealand’s gun laws are
a critical first step. However, moving beyond a purely legal
perspective in dealing with the violence and its aftermath
will ultimately make our communities safer, assuage the
needs of victims more effectively and help channel the
energy that might be directed to violent reprisals. This
needs to be done in ways that do not create a blame backlash
among groups in Kiwi society that feel threatened by the
rapid social, economic, and demographic changes that have
occurred in New Zealand over the past few
decades.

Collective Restorative Justice and the
Gender Multiplier

One perspective that can help
in this effort is a collective restorative justice (RJ)
approach. RJ has already been used both within and without
the criminal justice and corrections systems in New Zealand.
It generally involves face-to-face encounters between
victims and offenders facilitated by specialists who guide
the discussion to address three questions: 1) what was the
harm caused? 2) how will it be repaired? and, 3) who is
responsible for that repair? In other words, RJ helps bring
into focus and concretely address the physical, relational,
and social harms caused by violence.

Research has shown
that restorative processes in tandem with legal
accountability consistently produce higher satisfaction for
victims of crime than legal or restorative processes alone.
Surprisingly to some, in cases involving violent crimes, RJ
has even higher levels of victim satisfaction than for lower
level, non-violent cases, as well as a gender multiplier
effect for women’s empowerment in the justice process. In
other words, RJ in coordination with legal safeguards,
provides a better response for the deep psychological and
social impacts of violence and trauma, especially for those,
frequently women, who are more vulnerable to violence and
bear the heavier weight of its impact.

I will restate and
alter my opening. The Christchurch massacre was not an
ordinary crime scene, so not only will ordinary criminal
justice not suffice, neither will ordinary restorative
justice. In light of the large number of primary and
secondary victims, as well as the indirect trauma inflicted
on the nation as a whole, a simple RJ approach is
inadequate. Rather, a collective RJ
approach provides a framework for addressing any harmful
behaviour – from the interpersonal to the social to the
structural. Therefore, the values and framework of RJ are
essential in moving forward a collective, survivor-centred
approach.

Transforming Trauma through Cultural
Resilience

Central to such a collective
restorative approach is highlighting the resilience and
capacity of the Muslim community to assert its vision for
how the harm can be repaired. Islam is not only a religion,
but a dynamic supra-cultural ideology unifying various
ethnic sub-cultures. In the southern Philippines where I
have been engaged in peacebuilding work for over a decade, a
listening process was undertaken which obtained the input of
over 3,000 ordinary Muslims, Indigenous Peoples, and
Christian settlers as part of a "tri-people" transitional
justice component to the formal peace process between the
government and Islamic revolutionary groups.

An analogous
series of open-ended consultation processes that bring into
dialogue direct survivors, the victims' families, informal
Muslim leaders, the wider and global Muslim community, with
the support of non-Muslim friends and supporters of all
stripes and colours, could provide a critical mass and
platform for Christchurch survivors to support each other
over the long haul. The goal of this process would be to
collectively articulate ways in which justice, conceived
under a restorative and healing framework, can be
accomplished. Also prioritizing multi-faceted and rich Maori
experiences and perspectives on justice and healing would in
itself redress the historical violence and neglect
experienced by New Zealand's own indigenous population, and
foreground their necessary participation and leadership if
this effort is to claim a truly community-based
Transformative Justice identity.

A process built around
Muslim-Maori-Pakeha strengths would provide a
culturally-safe and appropriate way of processing the trauma
of the event, and thus should not be time-bound. This must
include specialized training and careful coordination
between justice and public safety professionals, social
welfare agencies, and non-governmental organizations and
individuals with the skills to assist. The recent denial by
ACC to support mental health trauma services for the father
of one of the victims (as reported in the Otago Daily Times)
is indicative of the critical importance of
this.

Expanding Circles of Forgiveness, Social
Media, and Everyday Anti-racism

A Transformative
Justice process also provides an avenue for the generous
spirit of reconciliation exemplified by Farid Ahmed, who
expressed forgiveness to the man who killed his wife, to be
amplified as a vivid example of Islamic non-violence. It
might eventually even involve a forum for a facilitated
encounter between Brenton Tarrant and representatives of the
community he so grievously harmed, a process that has been
known to open the eyes of even the hardest criminals to the
horrific effects of their actions.

Such efforts are
ingredients in a crucial tonic to the potential incendiary
rallying effect of the incident, which can be used as
propaganda promoting violent Jihad, and which has
exacerbated geo-political friction as video clips of the
attack were used by Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdrogan for
his political campaign soon after the massacre. Encouraging
and resourcing social media efforts translating and scaling
up Transformative Justice initiatives into various arenas
and platforms is an urgent imperative. It would capitalize
on the positive potential of the internet to invert
destructive social media discourses and curb their
incitement of actual, kinetic violence.

Collective
restorative justice should not only be integrated with acute
legal responses to the Christchurch attack, but utilized as
a framework for future grass roots anti-racism efforts.
Effective anti-racism programs are not built by banning
bigotry, if that were even possible. Rather, they work when
people with negative biases, which are invariably based on
stereotype, myth, partial truth, and exaggeration, are
brought into relationship with the “other” who is the
target of those same biases. Doing this requires courageous
yet respectful confrontations, restorative conversations,
and friendships with those who express such attitudes in
everyday interaction.

The National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies (NCPACs) where I am a student has begun
this kind of “conversational” initiative, which is an
essential part of concretely expanding the circle of
response into the everyday life of the community, as well as
beyond the immediate crisis response time frame. Zones of
peace where such radical disagreements can be expressed have
been used in conflict situations around the world to defuse
and prevent cycles of violence. These "zones" require
intentional "construction" of safe places and reflective
spaces for sustained social transformation, another effort
that students at NCPACS have initiated through a "Safe
Place" campaign at:
https://www.facebook.com/Safe-Space-New-Zealand-2177568969017521/
and http://bit.ly/safespacenz.

Transitional
Justice

Finally, since both the legal and
restorative approach involve inherent limitations, we can
borrow from the play-book of transitional justice in
constructing an institutional strategy that is complementary
with the values undergirding a restorative approach and the
procedural justice of the courts. Transitional justice
describes a cluster of responses that nations have used in
dealing with the shift (hence the term "transitional") from
large-scale violence such as civil war, genocide, and the
injustices committed by regimes that governed with impunity.
While South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
is perhaps the most famous, there have been a great many
efforts since the 1990s in a variety of countries and
contexts that could provide insight for New Zealand’s
effort.

After nearly three decades, these transitional
justice endeavours have generated a veritable cottage
industry of research, institutions, and consultancies around
the concept. The creation of a Royal Commission Inquiry into
the Christchurch attack in many ways falls in the domain of
transitional justice and is an extremely important effort to
be commended. Transitional justice can help frame the
multiple inquiries that will necessarily compose the work of
such a Commission. These can be identified under four
rubrics of exploration and engagement: truth-telling,
reparations, justice, and non-recurrence for dealing with
the past. A series of critical questions based on these
rubrics would generate not only productive avenues of
inquiry for the commission, but would help expand the circle
of stakeholders for the process.

Kiwi Justice - A
Beacon of Hope

In conclusion, a Kiwi-crafted
Transformative Justice approach that reflects New
Zealand’s unique local cultures and maximizes her expanded
global credibility is possible. It encompasses an integrated
response to the Christchurch massacre that includes legal,
restorative and transitional elements. It takes seriously
and holistically integrates the individual, collective,
cultural and institutional obligations engendered by the
atrocity. The mechanisms of legal justice ensure the
individual is held directly accountable for the actions he
committed. Collective restorative justice provides a
paradigm that centralizes the role of the survivors and the
cultural voices of the broader community in the process.
Transitional justice brings into focus the wider role of the
state and other institutions in society to address
underlying structural, political, historical, and cultural
root causes and prevent recurrence.

New Zealand’s
initial response to the attack has already provided a
positively viral beacon of hope for communities and nations
seeking to navigate polarized and violent realities.
Building on this through a comprehensive Transformative
Justice approach will further demonstrate that justice and
healing are not mutually exclusive, but are soul-mates of
reconciliation in a divided world.

Jeremy Simons is a
doctoral learner at the National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. A
trainer, mediator, advocate, and researcher, he draws on
over 15 years of expertise in Conflict Transformation (CT),
Restorative Justice (RJ), Chaplaincy, and Appreciative
Inquiry (AI). He has consulted with various academic,
organizational, religious, and community organizations in
the Unites States, the Philippines and New Zealand. He
believes in family, the power of humour in difficult
circumstances, and the importance of chocolate, God, coffee,
and hugs in facing the challenges of life. His doctoral
research focuses on restorative leadership, peace processes,
and indigenous justice in the southern
Philippines.

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